http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
For much of Charles Green's six years on Earth, it
seems, he was looking for just one thing:

Someone to protect him.

Instead, he was punished. As we reported Sunday,
authorities in Des Moines, Iowa, believe he was
punished to death -- kicked to death by his stepmother,
Shalonda Green, 27.

And now that he is dead, efforts are under way to blame
the child for provoking his own killing. He is not here to
defend himself -- and those who have the most to gain
by insulting his memory are doing just that: attempting to
depict the dead child as having behaved in a way that
brought about the discipline that police say killed him.

We will get to that momentarily -- we will get to the efforts
to degrade the boy even in death.

But we will start where Charles Green started -- as a
child who was heartlessly punished even before he was
old enough to understand what punishment is.

He was born to a Chicago woman, and lived with her for
two years. The Illinois Department of Children and
Family Services removed him from her home after
investigating disturbing allegations.

Debbie McCarrel, an official at DCFS' headquarters in
Springfield, told us that Charles suffered from "cuts,
welts, bruises, scalding, and human bite marks from his
mother." When he was rescued from that home, he was
placed with an aunt in Illinois.

She took care of him for three years, and reportedly he
was safe. But his biological father -- Tumma Green, who
lived in Iowa -- wanted him back. Charles was placed in
the Hephzibah Children's Association in Oak Park, Ill.,
where he was to be evaluated to see what would be best
for his future.

Officials of DCFS and the Iowa Department of Human
Services agreed that Charles would be well served if he
was sent to Iowa to live with Tumma Green and Green's
wife, Shalonda.

Mary Anne Brown, executive director of Hephzibah, told
us that when the boy departed for Iowa last fall, "We
thought this was the beginning of a great life for
Charles."

Instead, he was dead within five months.

Police and prosecutors say that Shalonda Green, who
reportedly weighed 280 pounds, kicked the 6-year-old so
brutally that he suffered severe head injuries, a torn liver,
and blood clots under his skull. He died two days later.

Now -- now that it is too late -- authorities in Iowa are
trying to determine how Charles' arm was broken after
he moved in with Shalonda and Tumma Green. They are
trying to determine how his head was split open a week
before the alleged stomping that killed him. Tumma
Green said the boy had fallen on some stairs. Doctors
lined the child's head with surgical staples following that
injury -- the surgical staples were in place when, a week
later, Shalonda allegedly kicked him repeatedly and
fatally in the head.

Which brings us to the insults to Charles now that he is
gone -- the blaming him for bad behavior, now that he
cannot speak for himself.

Shalonda and Tumma Green portray Charles as a boy
with deep behavioral problems. They have depicted him
to authorities as being violent with other schoolchildren,
as being developmentally disabled, as refusing to talk,
as defecating on himself to draw attention, as having so
much wrong with him that he had to be moved to a
school for children with multiple disabilities. Tumma
Green has said Charles was diagnosed with
attention-deficit disorder.

Shalonda Green told an Iowa television station that "I
had had a feeling like I had wanted to hit him and then I
wanted to hurt him."

Not that this should matter; as Polk County, Iowa,
prosecutor John Sarcone told us, "You can't kill a child --
I don't care if he is difficult."

But if Shalonda Green's defense is going to be based on what a difficult, violent,
misbehaving child was sent to her from Illinois -- and if Tumma Green is going to back
her up on that -- then what we will report next should be of interest to prosecutors in
Iowa.

Because -- there is no other way to say this -- from what we have been able to learn
about the kind of boy Charles was in Illinois before he was sent to his death in Iowa,
any contentions about chronic and violent behavior problems he allegedly brought with
him would appear to be a complete lie. We will report
tomorrow.

JWR contributor Bob Greene is a novelist and columnist. Send your comments to him by clicking here.